The 42-year-old mum quit her high-flying management job at Barclays Bank to create a new 16,000-bird woodland flock on the family beef, sheep and dairy farm, run by husband Hywel and his brother Geraint.

After building a multi- tiered 88m x 15.5m poultry unit, Sarah planted four acres of mixed woodland and secured a £45,643 Processing and Marketing Grant from Cardiff.

The RDP-funded grant helped pay for a stacker packer that allows 3,500 Lowman Brown eggs to be packed before human intervention is needed.

Sarah said: “We came in just at the end of the boom so really we have never known anything but poor prices. But if we can survive now, we’ll be well placed when the uplift comes.”

The unit produces 360,000 eggs-a-month which are sent, ungraded to Farmhouse Freedom Eggs, Usk, then on to Sainsburys.

Woodland eggs attract a 3p/dozen premium but Sarah still only receives around 85p-a-dozen – one reason why she’s looking to develop her own outlets.

Costs are another worry. “We order in 27 tonnes of feed every 13 days,” she said. “And in April the cost is going up to £250-a tonne.

“I only hope the UK government sticks to its guns. If, next year, it still allows illegal eggs to be imported, all the UK egg industry has done will be for nothing.”